


among thistles and red poppies

by InaccessibleRail



Series: under my cypresses [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:03:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4201998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InaccessibleRail/pseuds/InaccessibleRail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s sitting next to me, only not too close. I try not to look at his hands as he taps his fingers. One after the other, wave after restless wave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	among thistles and red poppies

**Author's Note:**

> Look listen I'm working up to something here.
> 
>  
> 
> This series centres around mental unhealth, so you may want to **see the end notes for warnings**. They are a bit revelatory, and that's why I put them at the end.

I’m flipping through a magazine. It’s the sort of thing I do now. Lounging on the couch with some light reading, like any upscale housewife—not that I have much of a frame of reference for the upscale. I think I’m getting on okay though. Sometimes I do homemaking like clean the apartment, but not often. And not well. It’s easier to just sit.

Try not to lose time.

I’m getting on okay. No foliage poking out of my ears.

I act as though I’m reading. He looked nervous when I picked this one out of the jumble that’s supposed to pass for a stack. I don’t know what for.

He’s sitting next to me, only not too close. I try not to look at his hands as he taps his fingers. One after the other, wave after restless wave.

I’ve gone through half of it and neither one of us has made a squeak. I flip the page. I act as though he’s not watching. The center spread is about the man on the cover. He’s got some sort of light fixture in the middle of his chest. I haven’t seen anyone else wear that. Maybe it’s a rich person thing.

You know who that is?

Sure I do, I say and grin at him to throw him off.

He stares at me: small, wavy motions come to a sudden ebb. Lips come together in a straight line. This is his neutral face: subtle like a deer in the headlights.

Do you wanna go out? he asks, and that throws me off.

I don’t want my hesitance to show, still I ask him: isn’t it late?

No, it’s not too late.

We look at each other for another blank-faced, screeching moment—then I nod in agreement and still it looks as though he’s waiting for me to take the bait. But I don’t move until he’s upright, swift like the deer on high places, and heading for his shoes.

He hands me his heaviest jacket. It feels as expensive wrapped around me as it looked hanging over his arm; someone bought it for him.

He’s searching frenetically through the coat closet because, he says, he knows there's another scarf in there somewhere. Another gift stuffed away and forgotten about.

I don't need one, I tell him, and he stops to give me that look—the look that precedes him telling me I have to take care of myself. Only lately it's been distilled into this two second glare. We're streamlining our communication. Yesterday it was three seconds and a sigh.

Now I’m at the door and to quell my jitters I ask him, mock serious: what if someone wants to arrest me?

He puts the scarf around my neck. It smells only a little the way winterwear smells after being in storage for a year—a little dusty and stale.

He smiles.

They can fucking try, he mumbles, mock joking.

  


It's been a long time since last I was in open air. In the breath before he swings open the front door I'm seized with the fear that there'll be snow out. But there's none. I'm enveloped by the chill and the traffic noise: sticky sounds of cars rolling by, footsteps slapping on wet pavement. People walk on fast because it's cold and because they're all in a hurry to go places. The cold gets under your clothes here. I'm glad I wore the scarf.

I'm slightly overwhelmed and lightheaded as I try to keep in step with him. Heartbeat thrumming. Everything smells of wet stone and the streets are too wide and the trees drip. Most of them are going bare, but up ahead my eye is caught by some whose leaves are holding fast, brilliantly red.

Like seeing myself at long distance—a bubbling, dripping, scarlet silhouette.

I’m aware of the agent following us on the other side of the street, but if he is too he’s not letting on. He slows down and I look up—straight ahead instead of sweeping the peripheral. Left, right, right, left. He’s led us to a food truck that only sells pies. This isn't as spontaneous an outing as his pitch had me believe.

I elbow him as he’s deciding on a flavor. I nod my head minutely toward the parallel sidewalk where the agent is about to go past us, but he only shakes his head like it doesn’t matter.

So the spooks know. I’m not surprised; though the thought picks at some small, nagging feeling in me. I don’t want to think too far ahead.

So I don’t.

Instead I appreciate his profile in the glow of the hatch. The hollow of his eye is cast in shadow; his upper lip. The hollow of his mouth lets out near-invisible plumes of air.

He gets a slice of cherry.

I pick apple, as though it's suggestive.

But I can’t make myself look away from the attendant as she prepares them. She hands them to us on paper plates and I’m trying not to overthink it. The first bite is sensational; I can’t tell if I’m ravenous or about to throw up.

He can’t seem to make himself look away from me. I eat even though I lose all enjoyment when I’m being observed. I pretend I don’t mind, and am rewarded with the way his satisfaction lights him up. Lessens the hollows, whatever lurks there.

It's vegan, apparently, he says out of nowhere, between his penultimate bite and the last.

What? I say, mouth full. I have no clue what that means.

He shakes his head, I think he's looking pleased again and that has my jaw hurting. I'm holding onto a laugh, slightly crazed and marveling.

Never mind, he tells me at length.

The taste of the crust has me thinking. I have a room I can go into, if I don't try too hard. If I only squint and don't focus on any one thing for very long. It's a kitchen and it's blue and nothing like the kitchen in his apartment or any kitchen from now; not shiny, not spacious and bright. It smells (faintly) of something, something at the tip of my tongue (nose.) Of yams. Some herb.

You remember making breakfast at my place?

You always forgot the bacon on the stove, he answers.

We go on like that for a bit as I finish my pie. Remember this? Remember that? He remembers it all. He likes reminiscing. Always grateful when I do it.

We stroll down the street, not talking, merely people watching: convenient because I’m still high-strung, can’t help but watch out. Some drunk folks spill out of the bar we’re passing and we bump into each other in our respective attempts to cover the other.

He meets my eye with a sheepish smile, and I must be staring back looking at least half as bad.

I wish it would rain so I could watch the water roll off his cheekbones and the tip of his nose, so I could press against him under an awning for a while; but the sky stays deaf and empty.

I want a grand gesture, but on a small scale. I could start a fight for him. Could start a fire in someone’s Yankees hat, and make it doubly romantic.

I can’t think of anything that’s not stupid.

My mouth is still sweet from the food. I wonder if it’s the same for him.

And it's just that. The thing is. Leading me here in the first place, that seed planted by being with him again, or knowing him from the start: it's turned green and sprouting in all this glorious, goddamned warmth that is him. Grass cracking through the asphalt. A feeling morphing into a state of being, mounting in me. All of me that's not numbly decomposing chases a forward motion. I’m tripping over my own feet, my own will. All that I am, my whole body wants-

wants to go back to some prior state - wants him back - wants back in. I don’t know. Wants back to completion. And all I do when he’s in front of me is measure the distance.

Strategize on the ways

I could

come closer.

We turn back. We walk idly, heads bowed. I don’t care about the watchers, about watching, just now. I inch toward him. I’m slipping my hand into his, feeling bolder than ever as the initial, frightened nausea of it passes. It’s so warm. He throws a quick glance my way, somewhat startled, but I go on as though I don’t notice.

We hold fast, the whole way back.

  


I know of at least one moment of clarity.

When I was with them.  
                        (Them?)  


It isn't clarity like remembering. I don’t know who I am. Or when it happens I don’t. But it's like materializing with my head above the clouds: I’m above the haze but I can’t see jack below for that matter. And I'm high up when it happens, but I don’t know if that has much to do with it. Suddenly I see the exit sign. I look down and think, oh, right-  
         here’s the rational thing to do.  


Just,

  


drop.

I don’t remember what the view looks like. Everything around me fades into that white mist and subdued sunlight. I only see the edge of the concrete roof. Not quite wide enough for my feet to fit: my steel-capped toes stand on air alone.

I’m clear of the treeline. I’m out in the open. It's a long way down to the ground. I just have to drop.

But someone’s behind me, (and a noise that’s not supposed to be there) and I’m compelled to look.

It’s not them, though by all rights it should be—but as I’m turning I already know. It’s not them.

It’s all dissipating, slipping through me, away from me. I was thinking about remembering. I was counting the times: once. At least once I thought about doing the rational thing. The right thing.

The noise was a gasp. A broken off cry. He stands frozen, watching me through the open balcony door.

The situation dawns on me and I am frozen too. We lock eyes. I turn my head back, I look down.

This isn’t a rooftop. We’re on the eighth floor. There aren’t many out, below, it’s not rush hour quite yet. No one’s noticed me.

I swallow hard. My mouth has gone dry.

He hasn’t said anything. Only that one injured sound wrung out of him. I breathe out carefully, I let go of the railing with one hand so that I can swing around, climb over it.

I go inside. I go slowly.

I’m achingly cold.

He didn’t use to cry, so I did it on both our behalf. Things are different now. He cries over the kitchen sink. In the bathroom. He turns the faucet on: a bizarre form of camouflage. Maybe it helps him—to pour it all out.

My mouth is dry, so is all of me. I feel windswept.

I’m okay, I say.

It only seems to rattle him more.

There’s no faucet running and his cheeks are wet. His eyes are red and he blinks rapidly, like it burns to look at me. He’s covering his mouth with his left hand. Some groceries have spilled out of the the bag by his feet and across the floor.

C’mon, I try, and I circle his wrist with my metal fingers for this next part:

I’ve had worse falls.

  


I’m making french toast, I tell myself in a low voice. Most of the eggs were intact, so here I go. I want to make something sweet for breakfast. Nothing subtle about it.

I’m whisking the eggs and the cream and the spices. I’m listening to the shower running. I’m sliding the knife through the bread, the first stroke, as his phone vibrates two feet away.

It’s a text from an unknown number.

_Let me take him there. He can make up his own…_

I unlock the phone.

_-mind._

I can tell it’s the redhead. I’m not jealous, but I’m-

annoyed.

I don’t get why she has to meddle. If she wants to bring me in, she could just come pick me up (- at least she could fucking try.) Instead she’s… negotiating.

I don’t understand what for.

 _Where?_ I write back. I stare down at the screen for a minute and a half but there’s no immediate reply. I put the phone down on the counter.

I finish cutting the slice of bread.

And another.

 _You shouldn’t read people’s texts,_ she writes.

 _Why?_ I write.

 _Would you open his mail too?_ she asks, and I think, well, _yeah._ It’s not something I explicitly recall, it’s not something I’ve done here—but it doesn’t seem that far-fetched an idea.

I wish I could transmit my scoffing properly, straight to her nosy little face, but I can’t so I don’t.

I delete the conversation without answering. I put the phone back by the percolator, just so.

As I’m bringing the coffee cups to the table, I hear him come out of the bathroom. I stand perfectly still until the exact right moment when he turns the corner, and as he does, I take a step forward.

I’m making french toast, I tell him in a low voice. I hand him his coffee. Right hand: fingers slightly scorched, touching his.

He takes a sip and makes a face as he burns his tongue.

Glad to hear it’s not bacon, he says.

I want to laugh but I can’t. I’m transfixed by his clean shaven face, by his profound voice. I’m looking at least half as bad again. Ditzy as hell.

He tucks some of my hair behind my ear. I want to lean forward and kiss him. He’s already turning away, as if maybe he knows.

I swear to God. 

From the bark of my brain, trees grow and ungrow. They sprout invertedly: they grown upside-down, inside the hollow of my head where I end up sometimes. I feel their roots wreathe along the grooves. The sharp tips of their crowns radiate toward a single focal point.

(They're all in a fit. The leaves and needles hang suspended midway between branch and ground.)

I’m going insane from this crippling inertia.

I want to know the spectacular way I failed him, to make him abstain like this.

I want to ask him: didn’t you think it worthwhile—before?

Don’t you think it could be? (Right now?)

I want to ask: we don’t have to be afraid now, right?

He’s getting up from the seat he’s taken at the table. I put my cup down, I’m angling myself toward him, marginally. Noticeably. My palms are- my palm is sweating. My heart lurches.

He’s walking past me, to the stove where I’ve forgotten the toast: I can smell it burn.

Sometimes the mesh of roots contract and my brain is almost reduced to pulp. Sometimes there is no forest, there’s only a dark room.

And I could go there.

I try to swallow around the lump in my throat. I ought to be pleased. Things are staying exactly the same as they were, it’s only the reasons that've changed. But who cares about the details. Who cares? I can’t remember them.

I bet he can.

My skull hurts. Behind me, he’s reaching out, tugging on the corner of my shirt. I swallow.

When I turn I’m smiling.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Warning for  
> \+ vague mention of disordered eating  
> \+ dissociative thoughts/blackouts  
> \+ suicidal thoughts & behaviour
> 
> I'm only showing the quote out of grave respect for tradition and extraterrestrial family values
> 
>  
> 
> _"When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,—it ate, and said thereby: "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar."_  
>  _It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me._  
>  _I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies."_


End file.
